Recently leaked documents show that Microsoft has been involved in partnership agreements with various Chinese state-run propaganda outlets including China Daily and People's Daily.
Microsoft reportedly provided technology to these media outlets for targeted reader engagement and an artificial intelligence (AI) robot. This revelation is raising concerns about Microsoft's involvement in disseminating propaganda in favor of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Though all such agreements have expired and were not since renewed, the fact that they were ever forged at all raises serious questions about the role American tech companies play in supporting anti-American messaging in support of the CCP.
"China Daily and People's Daily are known to be propaganda tools for the CCP, with China Daily being published by the party's Central Propaganda Department," reported Your News.
"The State Department identified People's Daily's parent company as substantially owned or effectively controlled by the Chinese government in 2020."
Microsoft loves China (and money)
Microsoft first forced a partnership with China Daily in September 2016. The tech giant provided technology support to help the propaganda outlet target and profile users, allowing communist China's media industry to successfully undergo a digital transformation.
Roughly two years later in June 2018, Microsoft forged a partnership with People's Daily in which the tech giant embedded an AI chatbot called Xiaoice into the paper's English edition. Microsoft specifically tuned Xiaoice to only provide responses that are pre-approved by the Chinese government.
If that is not enough, Microsoft also forged partnerships with various Chinese government entities and research labs. Microsoft's presence in the Chinese market is now so large that the company currently employs about 9,000 employees there with plans to hire even more.
Seeing as how China is an enemy of the United States, it would seem odd, ethically speaking, for Microsoft to support it. Then again, Microsoft loves money, and apparently loves communism as well.
The fact that Microsoft has announced plans to continue expanding in China is only raising more concerns about the company as a threat to national security. Then again, China pretty much owns the United States at this point.
"These are major propaganda outlets that publish outright falsehoods attacking the ideas of democracy, attacking the very concepts that undergird our society, and yet an American company is working to spread this," said Geoffrey Cain, policy director at the Tech Integrity project, which fights CCP influence in tech companies.
"The purpose of all this is to show the Chinese Communist Party that it's firmly on the side of China and the Chinese system."
In 2020, the U.S. State Department determined that the parent company of People's Daily is "substantially owned or effectively controlled" by the Chinese government. At the time, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remarked that the paper is one of the "mouthpieces of the Chinese Communist Party."
For China Daily, Microsoft developed a "Media Smart Cloud Innovation Technology Laboratory," the mission of which remains unclear, though it appears to be related to the Chinese New Media Laboratory. In 2019, a Chinese media scholar remarked that the Chinese New Media Laboratory "provides data support for research on [China's] international communication effects."
When the deal was first made, Microsoft and China Daily came together for a signing ceremony and photo op at which a senior company executive commented that it was "an honor to launch a strategic cooperation with China Daily," which Microsoft hoped would bring about "the success of the digital transformation of China's media industry through integration and innovation."
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